Insidious: The Hollow
by RandyGiles20
Summary: Set Post 'Insidious: The Last Key'. Four years after running away from home, Elise Rainier has found a place of peace and solitude. The Orange Grove seems perfect, and it doesn't draw the spirits her way. But there is something inside the Orange Grove, something insidious. It has been sleeping for a long, long time... and Elise's presence has woken it up.
1. The Orange Grove

_**Note: This is set Post 'Insidious: The Last Key' and may contain very minor spoilers.**_

 _ **1\. The Orange Grove**_

When Elise Rainier ran away from her "house" in Five Keys, New Mexico four years ago, she calls it a house as it was never a home, she never in a million years would have pictured herself picking oranges in St Lucie, Florida.

Compared to her old life, this was a slice of citrus pie. Spending her days under the warm, beating sun loading crates with hundreds upon hundreds of fat, juicy orbs of fruit. Her hands, her skin and even her hair seemed to smell permanently of oranges. She could keep to herself and enjoy her own company, she had a clean, comfortable place to stay and most importantly a roof over her head. This had always been the sought-after luxury since she had run away. She had spent years in an unsettled limbo, not knowing where she would sleep, or when her next meal would be. But now she was still. Now she was settled.

And although her father had never come looking for her, as far as she was aware, the spirits always came.

They visited her in her dreams at night. Occasionally she would see them on the street or in a particular shop, but she had never seen them at the Orange Grove. A place of such serene beauty could never house a tormented soul. How wrong she was.

She heard laughter behind her, two other pickers were working on the trees in the next row. They were laughing and joking about something, it might have been her. Everyone thought she was weird- the blonde chick who wore long sleeved shirts in the Florida heat, she knew they all called her 'Sister-Mary'. The kinder ones said it behind her back, but the others used it whenever they addressed her. It was a biblical joke because she didn't smoke, she didn't drink, she didn't party like the rest of them and she didn't go around with boys. She didn't mind, it meant everyone left her alone.

She sighed, sipped at the 2-dime bottle of cloudy lemonade she was keeping in the shade of the tree and then ascended the short ladder to carry on picking. The tree she was working on was one at the top of the great slope. She could see the next 500 trees all sloping before her, filled with bright orange bulbs ready for picking. She smiled to herself and then busied her hands with the oranges.

She worked hard, diverting her mind to the task at hand, sweat beaded around her hairline and dribbled down her neck and down her temples. It tickled her scalp and behind her ears. The long-sleeved shirt began to stick to her back and arms.

It was a hot day, the hottest yet, and she could feel the sun baking her pale, novice skin. She wanted desperately to peel off the shirt that seemed to weigh her down and press against her claustrophobically. She could work just as well, maybe even better wearing just the pale vest she wore beneath, but she couldn't risk anyone seeing the scars that left raised rail road tracks across her shoulders and back.

Even years on her father's punishments swam vividly in the front of her mind. Him placing her hands, palm flat, against her paisley papered bedroom wall. Seeing his shadow, cast by the lamp in the corner of the room, looming over her own shrunken, frightened form. The looming black mass held his cane above his head, the light and the shadow seemed to transform the cane into an elongated and deadly sword which her father would use to strike her and her ghost stories down!

The memory made her shiver, even in the burning heat.

'Sister-Mary!' the shout made her jump and she felt the ladder give a violent wobble. She braced herself against one of the lower arms of the tree, the side of her hand scraped painfully against a branch which snapped as she regained her balance.

She turned angrily towards the two pickers in the row behind to her, one of them laughed at her and the other stared at her, hands in his pockets, wearing a cocky grin.

'We're calling it for lunch. You coming?' the cocky one asked, tongue pressing against his top teeth.

'I'll be in after I'm done here' she said matter of factly and turned back to the bright oranges.

'Why don't you take that shirt off?' he said and his fried guffawed like an animal.

Elise turned around slowly, and stared at him, he sneered horribly, his lips pulled over his teeth in smug ugliness.

'It's just so hot. You must be soo hot' he jeered.

She cast her eyes down embarrassed and then went back to work, checking each orange with more attention than was needed, she heard them laugh as they walked away back towards the old house at the side of the fields.

In her embarrassment and her distraction, she did not notice the cut on the side of her hand caused by the snapped tree branch. She did not feel or see it dribbling down her wrist and soaking into the sleeve of her shirt. It wasn't a deep cut but because she kept moving and working it bled quite steadily.

A trickle of sweat tickled her eyebrow, she brushed it away with the cut hand and left a streak of scarlet, she flicked her hand out to get rid of the sweat and as she did a few thick droplets of blood were cast into the dirt beneath the tree.

The dark droplets lay there for a few seconds, as if startled to be out of their fleshy vessel and in the open, but then the earth seemed to swallow them, absorb them into the dry, loose soil beneath the shade of the Orange tree.

In the same second that the blood disappeared into the earth Elise saw a flash of white out of the corner of her eye, as if someone had run between the rows of trees. She turned her head quickly to see who it was, but she couldn't see anyone. She placed her hand on the bark of the tree and felt the sting of the cut. She looked down at her hand and was shocked to see so much blood from such a small graze. She wiped it on her shirt and then descended the ladder.

A familiar sensation began to cover her like an invisible veil. She knew the feeling well and knew what it meant. Someone was here with her, a ghost, a presence of some sort. The veil always covered her when they were near. At times she thought it was only through this veil that she could see and talk to them, and maybe no one else in the world had this veil so that's why nobody else could ever see them!

She stood very still and quiet for a few minutes, just listening. There was nothing but silence, strange silence. She could not even detect the sound of buzzing insects or birds. The sweat on her skin suddenly felt very chilly and made her feel resolutely cold.

She sensed rather than heard someone behind her, she turned slowly and saw the top of a cream coloured satin shoe poking out from behind the base of the tree she was working on. It was a small shoe, it must have been a child's. As if it knew it had been spotted it was suddenly snatched back behind the tree.

Elise took a very deep, settling breath, and paced slowly towards the tree to see who was hidden behind it.

There was no one.

No one stood behind the tree, no one was hiding. But then Elise saw that the figure, a young girl with thick blond hair spilling down her back, was standing further up the row. She was standing completely still with her back to her, feet together and back straight in an obedient stance.

Elise walked forwards slowly, not taking her eyes off the young girl, admiring the beautiful golden hair that cascaded down the back of her cream satin dress. Perfectly bright and flawless in the Florida sunshine.

She had walked close enough to reach out and touch her, and she did indeed reach out a hand to place on the young girl's shoulder, but before her finger tips could reach her she seemed to flicker out of existence and appear again further up the row.

Elise realised then that this girl wanted to show her something, and being the naïve philanthropist that she was, she did so without caution.


	2. The Hollow

_**The Hollow**_

Elise walked as if in a trance, following the girl until she was close enough to touch her and then watched as she blinked into thin air and then reappeared a distance away. She wasn't sure how long she'd been walking. The spell, she was well aware that she was under, had made her body quite numb, so she couldn't feel the aches and pains that she was sure she should feel. The heat of the day had definitely cooled and the bright blue sky now had wild streaks of blood orange as the sun was beginning to set.

She had never been to this part of the Orange Grove, the trees were much more spaced apart, the oranges grew more and more sparse and the leaves seemed to turn brown and decayed with each branch.

The blood orange sky darkened suddenly as the ghostly girl in satin appeared in front of an ancient wooden fence that stood 10ft tall at the edge of the Orange Grove's boundary. Elise took in the image and felt overwhelmed by the grand scale of the wooden planks that stood side by side keeping everyone from getting in… or perhaps to stop something getting out. There was a large painted sign that was nailed just above where the girl stood. It read 'Condemned- Do Not Enter'.

Elise could barely ponder this as she was getting close to the girl whose face she still had not seen, she reached out her hand to touch the girl's shoulder, but as she had done before, she winked out of existence, and this time she did not reappear. Instead her absence allowed Elise to see a large jagged gap in the Godly fence, the wood seemed to have rotten in this part between the seams of the planks.

Elise moved a little closer and could see the edge of the gap was a sickly, moist blackish green, and it almost seemed to pulsate and glisten as if the rot were a living, breathing entity covering the wood.

The smell of decay seeped into her nostrils as she stepped closer still. It was a sickly-sweet smell, the smell of fruit rotting in a bowl that's been left in the sun. She could detect the aroma of oranges, but it was tainted by the smell of putrefaction, it filled her head and turned her stomach.

Holding her breath, she looked through the gap, it was a dark void, she could see some twisted trees, dark and gnarled upturned roots and mounds and mounds of something. An unknown something.

As her eyes adjusted she saw the girl in satin standing, still facing away, a little distance past the wooden fence.

A sudden tremor of doubt shuddered the blood in her veins. She knew she could fit through this gap- it would be easy. But willingly going through there into the black void would be taking a step closer to a place she had desperately tried to escape for the last four years.

This was a place where Evil Things lived. This was a place that held doorways to different realms and dimensions. This was a place where doors could be unlocked and the Evil Things could crawl out and kill people… just like they had killed her mother.

While all of this whirled and spun about in her mind the ghostly girl stood still and waited patiently beyond the rotten gap in the fence.

Curiosity pushed away caution and Elise took the plunge. She pushed her arms through the gap and braced herself on the soft, sickly squishy floor as her head followed. She had to wiggle a little to squeeze her hips through but it was easy really.

Once she was free of the gap she got clumsily to her feet, which seemed to sink and stick in the mushy ground. Her eyes adjusted and she got a clearer picture of the strange void that surrounded her.

At some point it must have formed part of the Orange Grove, there were several trees that seemed to form a twisted and crooked circle. The trees were dead, dry and petrified like old bones. The mounds she had seen before she now realised were piles and piles of mouldy, rotten oranges. They were shrunken and puckered, laced with green and black powdery mould. They seemed to pulse and wobble as if they were clusters of jellied, membranous eggs.

Rotten, sticky juice dribbled grotesquely, like pus, over their puckered and wrinkled skin. Little puffs of green mould hissed out into the dank air as the weight of the rotten oranges squashed down onto other rotten oranges.

The smell was overpowering and unbearable, the stink of decay seemed to fill every inch of Elise's body, it caused her head to ache and her mouth to fill with salty saliva as the need to vomit itched the back of her throat.

She closed her eyes to steady herself, and while she collected herself and her thoughts she remembered why she was there.

She opened her eyes and they fell on the girl still standing stock still and obedient with her feet together and her arms held in front of her. She seemed to have an ethereal glow around her that the decaying darkness could not penetrate.

Elise walked forward towards her, her shoes getting stuck in the rotten orange mulch on the ground. As she stepped closer she saw that she was nearing the centre of the twisted circle of trees, and at its core there was a large hole in the ground, like the black pupil of an evil, grotesque eye.

The ghostly girl, still in her pale satin dress and pretty shoes, stood at the edge of the hole which Elise realised must have been a well at one point. The edge of the hole held one layer of stones cemented together to form its boundary.

Elise stepped ever closer, she could see the golden strands of the ghostly girl's hair, she could see the little creases in the satin dress, and she could see the tiny scattering of soft fair hairs across the little girl's shoulder and up her neck.

She stepped closer, she reached out, expecting the girl to vanish as she had done every other time, though a small piece of her braced herself for the girl to turn and reveal herself.

She stretched out her hands slowly, as if reaching for a frightened animal, she flexed her fingers, her fingertips mere millimetres away, she held her breath waiting in tension.

The girl blinked out of existence once again and Elise was left at the precipice of the black chasm of the well beneath her.

She let her breath spill out in frustration, but the sound of shifting silk directly behind her made her blood run suddenly cold. She stiffened as fear and shock and terror washed over her like cold water.

She turned, very slowly, knowing somehow that she was about to see the girl's face but realising deep within her psyche that what she would see would shake her to her very core.

The girl was mere inches from her, Elis firstly saw her pale, thin shoulders, her long slim neck, her golden hair curved and curled against her collar bones. Elise's eyes continued upwards, nothing she had ever seen or dreamed about could have prepared her for what she saw.

Her brain could not register it at first, she felt her lips part and her heart stutter, but her brain could not programme the alien concept before her.

The girls face was an open black cavern, a gaping grotesque hole, a dark swirling vortex that could swallow the world whole.

A scream caught in Elise's throat, she gagged silently, only managing a few wet gurgles.

She wanted desperately to look away, fearing she might get sucked into that gaping chasm!

As her eyes widened she took even more detail, she spotted hundreds of bone white needles around the edges of the girls mouth, if you could call it a mouth, some cold clarity told her they were rows upon rows of razor sharp needle teeth that spiralled all the way through the girls mouth and down her throat.

Elise was frozen and horrified in her trance, looking into the infinite black hole. The girl stepped forward, the movement made Elise jump but she was unable to move, her feet felt as though they were ankle deep in the orange mulch.

Elise's face was in the black terrible mouth now, her own lips open wide in a frozen, demented scream.

She saw herself, a miniature version of herself, gripping senselessly onto the edge of the girl's chasm mouth, the needle-sharp teeth stabbing her palms and making her grip slippery and wet with blood. As she watched she felt violent stabbing pains in her own palms, the sensation brought her out of her strange frozen state and she realised with even more building terror that she was no longer standing in the orange rot but _in_ the dark well, she was gripping on to the stone edge, trying, clawing desperately to get out!

The girl stood by her bleeding, dangerously slipping hands. Elise noticed that the pretty cream satin shoes were now black with oozing mud, the cream coloured legs were skeletal and grey, the pale satin dress was a filthy brown and coarse material, the chest and arms were gaunt and emaciated, just like the dead twisted trees that enclosed them.

Elise knew the fall was inevitable. The harder she tried to grip onto the edge of the well the more her hands were stabbed and impaled by the needles that burst out of the well's black walls. Pain shot through her palms and her forearms, it throbbed and whined as she tried ever harder to keep her grip, but the pain and slippery blood overcame her desperation!

As her hands finally gave way, she stared at the monster, the hideous creature that had lured her there, she stared into its grotesque gaping mouth and saw her miniature self float away, float down into the black chasm of darkness.

Like Alice spiralling down the rabbit hole, not knowing which way was up or down, Elise closed her eyes and waited for the crushing, calling bottom that would mark her lonely end.


End file.
